Emotions: Freedom from Anger, Jealousy and Fear

The chapter opens with a simple psychological definition: you want something, someone blocks it, your energy gets blocked, and that blocked energy turns into anger. Osho explains this without complex terminology, in a few short sentences — and this is where the book's poem-like, short-lined format, which continues throughout the chapter, begins: each idea is given under its own heading, with a few lines of "breathing space" around it.

He then puts forward two complementary claims. First: anger itself is "real," because it belongs to you — so instead of denying it, you need to find its source; if you close your eyes and go inward, toward where the anger comes from, before it disappears, you'll eventually reach an "emptiness." Second, a seemingly opposite but complementary idea: anger doesn't actually come from the center but from the "ego" — Osho describes the ego as a relative, false identity created by society. So the emptiness you find when moving toward the center is precisely the place where the ego isn't; anger lives exactly on the border between that emptiness and the ego.

The section's most memorable part is Osho's observations on how repressed anger leaks into daily life: he writes that repressed anger can show up in the most ordinary acts — aggressive chewing while eating, repeating the same "attacking" motions while making love, opening a door, setting a book on the table, taking off a shoe, even shaking hands. These examples are so concrete that they push the reader to reexamine their own daily habits.

From here Osho moves to a sharper statement: anger that's been repressed for a long time stops being a separate feeling and becomes part of a person's entire being. "You have already become anger personified" — this line is the chapter's harshest, yet most memorable sentence, and it displays well Osho's characteristic style of addressing the reader directly in the second person.

The chapter's central philosophical argument is opposing the "good-bad" division: Osho insists that calling anger "bad" and calmness, or "non-anger," "good" already creates a split — just as with the sex/non-sex, greed/non-greed pairs. This split keeps you from recognizing anger as it is, from facing it. What you end up doing, Osho says, isn't transformation but simply repression — even if you feel yourself spiritually "above it," that may just be a more refined mask.

It's no accident that anger is the book's first chapter: for Osho, anger is the most "visible," the most easily recognized emotion, so it serves as an entry point preparing the reader for the more hidden, more shame-laden feelings of jealousy and fear that follow. This ordering reveals the book's pedagogical logic — from simple to complex, from the obvious to the hidden.

The section closes with a concrete instruction: don't rush to observe. Osho suggests first forgetting the "observer," fully living whatever is felt — hateful, ugly, worthless, whatever it is — and letting awareness enter into it. Moving to observation without doing this, he says, simply continues the repression. Only after living the feeling fully and sincerely, without judgment, does it gradually begin to lose its power on its own, and the possibility of observation arises as a natural, not forced, stage.

The book itself is originally titled "Emotions: Freedom from Anger, Jealousy and Fear," and is compiled from lectures Osho gave to live audiences on different occasions — which explains why the text is structured not as chapters but as short, separately titled blocks. Sevil Gültən's translation into Azerbaijani carries over this poem-like format, preserving the line breaks and repetitions; the reader is forced to read the text not quickly, but gradually, pausing along the way.

What comes after this is the work of the rest of the book — the connection between anger and sadness, the Jealousy and Fear chapters, and finally the concrete meditation techniques. So we're stopping here, and we recommend you get the book and read it yourself. But if what you've read so far interests you and you can't decide whether to get it, you can check the brief overview of the remaining chapters in the section below. The following chapters continue in the same short, meditative format.

• The chapters aren't structured in the classic sense but as short, titled "blocks" — each less than a page.
• Osho's second-person ("you") address makes the text direct, sometimes confrontational.
• Since the book is compiled from live lectures, the language leans conversational rather than academic.
• Osho (1931–1990) is a controversial spiritual leader; it may be useful to seek additional context on his biography and the community he led — this review focuses only on the book's content.
• The book was first published in 1999, then in an expanded form in 2013; the Azerbaijani translation (Qanun Nəşriyyatı, trans. Sevil Gültən) is based on this later version.